I’m just gonna throw this out there - am I the only one who has noticed that the breasts on the nurses in Silent Hill games have gotten progressively bigger over the years? I mean just look at the rack on the naughty nurse from Silent Hill: Homecoming in the picture to the left - she’s popping out of her top! The nurses are supposed to be scary, not sexy.

Now that I’ve gotten that out of my system, on to the actual review!

Silent Hill: Homecoming is the first entry into the series from developer Double Helix, and they managed (for the most part) to stay on target when it comes to making a solid Silent Hill game.  Homecoming has all the ingredients that go into a delicious Silent Hill stew, however, the quantity of some of those ingredients has been altered, and the results are a bit mixed.

The very first thing I noticed about SH: Homecoming is that the atmosphere is perfectly executed. The levels are suitably creepy looking, and the sound design is above all reproach. With a good surround sound system you will hear things creeping, crawling, howling, and oozing all around you. The characters are another story. There’s nothing particularly wrong with most of them, there just isn’t anything right with them either. You play as Alex Shepherd, who returns home to Shepherd’s Glenn from the war to find his little brother, Joshua, missing. It’s not actually Alex I have a problem with, so much as the supporting cast. With the exception of Alex’s mom, none of the side characters have that special brand of “not quite right in the head” that Silent Hill characters are known for. In previous entries in the series, every side character made me feel uneasy or distrustful towards them - that’s just not the case in this game.

The characters are a little dry, but the plot is pretty solid. During Alex’s search for his missing brother, you find out some interesting and disturbing things about Alex, his family, and their role in the history of Shepherd’s Glenn. While it’s no Silent Hill 2, Homecoming will fill the empty hole in your dark dark soul that needs a disturbing story, complete with multiple endings. The choices you make will determine what ending you get, and some of the choices you’re forced to make are actually pretty messed up. There’s five endings. I’m not going to go into any details here, but I will say there’s one good ending, one goofy ending, and three….. let’s say unpleasant endings. The game has a few flaws, but the endings make a strong case for multiple play-throughs.

The story is pretty solid, and the game does a good job of wrapping you up in the dark fantasy world it creates,  but there are a few things that sort of take you out of the fantasy. For instance, Alex’s family’s house happens to be graveyard adjacent. Really? They live RIGHT NEXT TO A GRAVEYARD? Seems a little cliche, don’t you think? Also, there’s a boarded up door in Alex’s house that you can’t get into until 3/4 of the way through the game. Yup, there’s a door in your own home you can’t access because it’s boarded up. Oh, and guess what’s behind that door? *spoiler alert* it’s just a first aid kit. Nothing spooky, or plot relevant.

The one big misfire this game makes is it’s attempt to force combat on the player more than other games in the series ever did. As a war veteran, Alex has more combat training than any previous protagonist in the SH series, and as such, he can dodge enemy attacks, and fire a gun more accurately than James or Heather ever could have. Unfortunately, these new abilities feel wedged into the existing combat system put in place by other games in the series. For example, when you hold down the L2 button to aim your gun, Alex seldom points it anywhere near an enemy, leaving you to slowly adjust the aim as your enemies grow ever closer. When the game puts you in a small space, and throws a few enemies at you, you will find that the new combat features will get you killed. Repeatedly. That’s one part due to the new combat features themselves, and one part due to the fact that the enemies are more aggressive than in other installments in the Silent Hill series. It doesn’t help matters any that item distribution is a little off. In the beginning, health items are abundant, and you don’t really need them. In the middle, health items are scarce and you DO need them. By the end, items are given at a fair pace for the difficulty.

If you’ve never played a Silent Hill game before, and you’re interested in the series, go out and get a copy of Silent Hill 2 for the PS2, or original Xbox. You’ll have a better time, I promise. If you’re a fan of the series, and of survival horror games in general, this game will make an adequate edition to your library of horrors. Despite it’s flaws, Homecoming kept my eyes glued to the screen for the duration of the game, and it even managed to make me flinch a couple of times. If you don’t like survival horror games, this one isn’t going to change your mind. If you do, it’ll keep you wrapped up for a solid ten to twelve hours, and maybe even inspire you to fire up Silent Hill 2 one more time for old time’s sake.

-Mike Kurz

Tags: Cross Platform, horror, PS3, review, Silent Hill, Sony, Xbox 360

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